This invention relates to an improvement in an apparatus for dispensing a tape, i.e., ribbon, web or string, generally referred to herein as “tape”, when the tape is being unwound at a laminating machine such as a corrugating machine or press. One aspect of the present invention is the unwinding of a roll of tape without having to individually unpack each roll or manipulate each roll of tape individually.
Reinforcing or Tear tapes have been used for many years in modem packaging as an aid to maintain structural integrity or as an easy open feature in boxes, packages and/or containers. The commercially available tape dispensers used at corrugating or laminating machine have an important limitation. All spools or rolls are supplied in individually packaged boxes, where each roll has to be unpacked, lifted and installed on a tape dispenser machine located near the corrugating or laminating machine. Since each roll has to be manually lifted and manipulated by the operators of the laminating or corrugating machine, each roll cannot weight more than 35 pounds to limit the dangers of injuries to the operators. This fact brings another important drawback. With a spool or roll weight this small, only a very limited amount of linear footage of tape can be wound on these rolls. With the laminating or corrugating machines going faster over the years, an important need for splicing these rolls arose, since these processes cannot be stopped as they need to have a constant supply of tape. In this industry the footage of these tape rolls are usually between 10,000 and 30,000 feet. Since multiple tapes are used in these packaging making processes, we often see a splicing rate for tape roll of 1 roll every 5 to 8 minutes. This means that an operator has to unpack a roll, lift it, install it on the dispenser and prepare the splicing mechanism every 5 to 8 minutes. This procedure can be very time consuming.
The literature is abundant with such tape dispensers and splicing systems, and they all have in common the limitation to roll size and weight and the necessity for the operator to manually handle these rolls. In more details, we can see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,917,327 and 5,029,768 where we clearly see the general parameters of the tape dispenser and the need for tension control and a splicing mechanism. In U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,775,629 and 6,325,324 we also see different splicing techniques that can be used on tape dispensers.
The use of a package that dispenses tape exists in other applications than the corrugated board reinforcement or easy open feature for containers. For example, in the pressure sensitive adhesive packaging tape we can see many patents on this subject: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,372,472; 4,453,634; 4,676,446; 4,998,655 and 5,071,051 are all patents on this subject. But all these patents, even if they cover the concept of package and dispenser, are all related to handheld dispenser of small rolls of pressure sensitive packaging tape and none use the concept of packaging/dispenser for the purpose of reducing roll manipulations and thus the increasing of tape roll footage.
Transport and packaging assemblies have also been proposed in the past. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,228,821; 5,692,625 for example, disclosed folding racks for the storing and dispensing of rolled material. However, these systems are not design for high speed dispensing and they do not include tensioning/braking device to generate tension in the unwound material. Also, these systems are limited to one or two rolls, a feature which may not be desirable when multiple rolls are needed simultaneously.